bad timingA surprise Saudi Arabian announcement at 9:00 AM ET, September 5, pushed Brent crude up over $90 for the first time since November and set a new high for the year. The extension of the current voluntary 1m barrel-per-day cut through December will continue to prop up a fundamentally strong market. Saudia Arabia will keep their output at about 9 million barrels a day, while a separate announcement by Russia also extended their export cuts of 300,000 bpd for the same duration. In contrast rig counts are falling in the US while production is ticking up strangely, mainly due to drilled-but incomplete wells being finished off. Front spreads are strongly backwardated as refineries run crude at high capacity to try and rebuild depleted downstream products inventories. It’s the perfect bull market from a real, physical world perspective.